Description

B.A.T. is cyberpunk romp through the underworld of crime and corruption. As agent for B.A.T. (Bureau of Astral Troubleshooters), an ultra-secret organization serving the Confederation of the Galaxies in the 22nd century, you will be assigned various missions covering a wide range of spy activities and planets.

B.A.T. is a mixture of first-person adventure game and role-playing. Most of the game is spent exploring the futuristic locations, talking to characters and gathering items needed to advance the narrative. Combat occurs randomly and utilizes a real-time system: the player must prepare for the battle within a limited amount of time, after which the combatants exchange blows. The protagonist is able to side-step and dodge the attacks. Other features include the ability to program the B.O.B. (organic computer implanted on your arm), and RPG-style character development based on various stats.

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Trivia

MV-16 sound-card included in the Atari ST version

The Atari ST version of the game was shipped with a small cartridge named "MV-16" which had to be plugged in the expansion port. This piece of hardware was not only used as a dongle to prevent using pirated copies of the game, it was also a small sound-card! It allowed playing digital samples in different qualities, with up to 16-voices at the same time. As the ST's build-in sound-chip only features three synthetic voices and don't allow to play digital samples at all (without any processor time consuming tricks), this greatly extended the audio scope of the game. The cartridge was not limited to this game, it was useable as a general device and it was also supported by the successor BAT II (in which it was not included) and some external tools like the Music Master audio editor.

Mobytrack

The game features an underground transportation system on the planet Terrapolis called the Mobytrack.

Amstrad CPC version

The Amstrad CPC version filled both sides of two 3-inch floppies and the audio is completely absent throughout the whole game.